"We'll make South Carolina howl!" they said.
I saw an unoccupied mansion, upon the floors of which were Brussels and tapestry carpeting, and mirrors of French plate-glass adorned the parlor. There was a library with well-filled shelves, and in the drawing-room a costly rosewood piano,—all of which in an hour were licked up by the flames.
Far away to the north, as far as the eye could reach, were pillars of smoke, ascending from other plantations.
"We'll purify their Secession hate by fire," said one.
The soldiers evidently felt that they were commissioned to administer justice in the premises, and commenced by firing the premises of the South Carolinians. They were avengers, and their path through that proud State was marked by fire and desolation. "South Carolina began the Rebellion, and she shall suffer for it. If it had not been for her there would have been no war. She is responsible for all the misery, woe, and bloodshed." Such was the universal sentiment.
Although Sherman's troops carried the torch in one hand and the sword in the other, and visited terrible retribution upon the Rebels, they were quick to relieve the wants of the truly loyal. A few days before reaching Savannah they came to a plantation owned by a man who through all the war had remained faithful to the Union. He had been hunted through the woods with bloodhounds by the Rebel conscript officers. Hearing the Yankees had arrived, he came out from his hiding-place, and joined the Twentieth Corps, with the intention of accompanying it to Savannah. The soldiers made up for him a purse of one hundred and thirty dollars. When it was presented he burst into tears. He could only say, so great was his emotion, "Gentlemen, I most heartily thank you. It is a kindness I never expected. I have been hunted through swamps month after month. My wife and children have been half starved, insulted, and abused, and all because we loved the old flag."
The stories which were told by those refugees, of Union men and conscripts hunted by bloodhounds, of imprisonment and murder by Rebels,—of the sufferings of the Union prisoners at Millen, Libby, Salisbury, and Andersonville,—wrought the soldiers of Sherman's army into a frenzy of wrath against South Carolina.
Mt. Vernon, Edward Everett, The Capitol, Savannah.